By: Boston Spaceships
Appears on: Let It Beard
“Earmarked For Collision,” from the Boston Spaceships masterpiece of a double album, Let It Beard, is all about nuance. Robert Pollard uses a couple of his trusty guitar techniques to craft a song with many parts that are very similar to one another, but with subtle differences. For example, the song’s main riff uses an open string drone (the open D note on the fourth string) with floating chord shapes (an open D chord shape moving up to become a Dm7). From there, Pollard sometimes plays the chords in a staccato fashion—that is, striking the chord and then instantly muting it to create a short sound—and lets them ring out at other times.
